Of all the documents we obtained from the family of Tech Sgt. Steven D. Bellino, who the Air Force says killed his squadron commander and then himself seven months ago, none is more painful to read than a note found in a storage unit he rented in San Antonio.

The note is undated and unsigned. The Air Force said it was likely written in August 2015, months before Bellino’s fatal encounter with Lt. Col. William “Bill” Schroeder at Forbes Hall, headquarters for the elite Battlefield Airmen program.

The Air Force calls the letter a suicide note. Bellino’s family thinks it’s a forgery.

Those who closely read it and other documents we know Bellino wrote, such as the 13-page typewritten timeline of events that cover both his stay at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland and tenure with the Army and FBI, will find similarities.

Folks may wonder how someone forging such a note could have been aware of incidents and events going back years in his life, given that Bellino rarely told anyone about his successes or his failures. Letting people into his life, even those closest to him, just wasn’t his way. Bellino never told his family he was a Green Beret or that he graduated with honors from Ohio State University.

“I never wanted any family, never to settle down,” the note says. An Air Force psychiatric exam conducted months after the note was written revealed that Bellino never dated in high school, never married and had no children. It’s possible he talked with someone in the Air Force about that while in the PJ program, but unlikely, given his habits.

So let’s assume Bellino wrote it. He begins by asking that his letter not be shared “with any authorities or representatives of the government. As far as they are concerned I have left no final communication. I am only writing this letter so those who are important to me will not be forever completely in the dark.”

He continues, “I’m very sorry for leaving you and I know you will not understand why. This letter will not be long enough to convey an understanding, but will help you begin to know why. I do not like this world and I do not want to be a part of it any longer. There is no place I belong. I’ve searched for many years to find a home consistent with my ethics and such a place does not exist.”

In this description, Bellino’s inability to find a comfort zone starts in the Army, on active duty, and continues through his time in the FBI years and to the end of his life.

“At the end of my first eight years on active duty I could not find any suitable place, so I left with the intent of eventually joining the FBI and trying out for their HRT (Hostage Rescue Team). Before finishing at Quantico I had strong considerations for resigning; however, I thought since I had went that far I would remain in the organization longer to see if the environment would turn the corner,” he writes, adding that working in the agency’s New York division only made things worse. “The lack of any purpose in my job was extremely disturbing.”

He would have joined the HRT, “but by that time both of my legs had injuries requiring several months of rehabilitation, and the HRT try outs were held only once a year,” says the note. His father, Michael Bellino Sr., disputes the credibility of the note, saying his son suffered an injury to only one leg — not both. That, he and others in the family assert, is proof of a forgery.

The elder Bellino and his family also can’t believe he would leave the note on a flash drive in a storage shed. That’s just two sloppy for a man with a long history in special operations.

The Hostage Rescue Team was indeed Bellino’s reason for joining the FBI. It’s where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do. In time it emerged as a safety valve, a way out of an organization he had grown to detest.

“If I had ascended to the HRT this would have shielded me from much of the impropriety I saw and provided much greater appreciation for my job (at least that is what I speculated). At this point I was so disgusted with the FBI it was not worth hanging on any longer, so I left regardless of the consequences. Every day I was there felt like a lie and as if I couldn’t breathe. Agents were there to achieve their dream title, not actually make the world a better place. This makes me seem naïve. Perhaps I was.”